Preparing to Level Your Crafting
Preparing to Level Your Crafting
Plan costs with gw2crafts.net and use Discovery for extra crafting experience.
How do crafting levels work?
Level your crafting discipline by combining materials into items. Learn how to use the crafting panel and Discovery, manage materials, and keep costs down.
Choose your discipline and level range on gw2crafts.net, then read the Normal guide's shopping list. Use an F2P guide for a free account or the mastery-specific guide if you have Productive Downtime. Prepare the materials and follow its Discovery and Production steps.
The crafting panel
Approach a crafting station and press F to interact. Of the usual five tabs, Discovery and Production matter most for leveling.
| Tab | Purpose | Role in leveling |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | Combine ingredients to discover a recipe | Main source of discovery bonus experience |
| Production | Craft recipes you already know | Used between discoveries |
| Bank | Access items in your bank | Reference / storage |
| Material Storage | Access material storage | Reference / storage |
| Wardrobe | View unlocked skins | Not part of leveling |
Leveling through Discovery
What is Discovery?
Discovery combines ingredients to learn a recipe while making its first item. You receive additional crafting experience for the discovery, helping you level more efficiently than simply repeating known recipes.
- Discovery experience bonus: +100–150%
- Discovering a rare item: +325%
Take advantage of new recipe discoveries as you progress through your discipline.
How to discover a recipe
- Open Discovery
- Double-click or drag ingredients from the list into the mixing slots
- A valid combination displays the item icon
- Select Craft
The panel shows how many possible recipes remain as you add ingredients. Use this to narrow the combination, or select Reset to clear it.
If you have the required ingredients and Craft is enabled, the recipe succeeds.
Why does repeating an item give less experience?
Crafting experience depends on the gap between your discipline level and the recipe's required level. Ordinary items and food usually stop giving experience at a 40-level gap; refinements and components at 25. Exotic equipment and some other recipes use different ranges.
How do you learn recipes?
There are three main methods.
Automatic unlocks: advancing the discipline teaches many refinement and component recipes.
Discovery: combine ingredients to learn many finished-item recipes, including equipment, bags, and consumables.
Recipe sheets: consume a recipe item bought from an NPC or earned through content.
- Ascended equipment recipes are not learned through Discovery. Many require purchased or earned recipe sheets; some unlock automatically. Check the specific item's recipe source first.
- Consuming a recipe sheet unlocks it for all characters on your account. You do not need to buy another copy for each character.
Using material storage
The basics
Material storage is separate from your ordinary inventory and holds eligible crafting materials in dedicated slots.
Depositing materials
Select Deposit All Materials at the top of your inventory to send eligible materials to storage. You can do this from anywhere, including immediately after gathering.
Capacity
- Base capacity: 250 of each material
- Maximum: 3,000 of each, after eleven Gem Store Storage Expanders
Start with the free 250 capacity. When a material reaches the limit, use, sell, or otherwise store the excess.
Accessing stored materials
Use a bank or crafting station to access material storage. Crafting can use stored ingredients directly; you do not need to withdraw them first.
Planning costs with gw2crafts.net
Costs vary by discipline and material prices. gw2crafts.net calculates a route using Trading Post data. Check the page's update time against the prices you actually pay.
Steps
- Open the site: gw2crafts.net
- Choose your discipline
- Choose Normal or Fast
- Normal: recommended. Compares making and buying components to reduce costs.
- Fast: simpler repeated crafting over level ranges, usually at a higher cost.
- Check the estimate: Initial Cost, Expected Recovery, and Expected Final Cost appear near the top.
- Read the shopping list: it separates items into four groups:
- VENDOR: buy from NPCs at their listed prices
- RECIPES: recipe sheets to learn first
- COLLECTIBLES: check material storage, then buy what is missing
- MIXED: components to buy on the Trading Post
- Prepare the listed materials
- Follow each level range: use the listed Discover and Make steps
- Read the shopping list before starting. Preparing materials saves trips away from the station.
- Actual costs can differ because prices update periodically and available quantities vary.
- We recommend the Normal route for beginners. It involves more steps but can save gold.
API access is optional
Enter a key and select Get Bank Content to fill in quantities from your bank and material storage. It needs inventories permission, plus unlocks to check recipes. You can enter quantities manually without a key.
See Creating an API Key for instructions, then enter it on gw2crafts.net if you want to use that feature.
Use crafting boosts you already have
Activate boosts after preparing materials, just before crafting. Crafting-experience bonuses can reduce the materials needed to reach a discipline level. Start with free guild buffs and boosters you already own; avoid overspending on boosters.
A crafting critical success gives 50% additional crafting experience. It does not improve the item's quality or stats. Increasing that chance can make discipline leveling more efficient.
Boosts and their effects
| Source | Effect | How to get it |
|---|---|---|
| Item Booster | +50% crafting critical chance | 1 laurel from a Laurel Merchant; 100 gems from the Gem Store |
| Experience Booster | +50% character experience earned through crafting | 1 laurel from a Laurel Merchant; 100 gems from the Gem Store |
| Heroic Booster | +50% crafting critical chance | Gem Store, achievement rewards, and personal-story rewards |
| Guild Crafting Boost | +6–20% crafting critical chance | Free from a guild-hall NPC after the guild unlocks it |
| Productive Downtime | Tooltip: +10% crafting experience and +10% critical chance. The wiki records an actual base-experience bonus of +15%. | Pact Commander mastery: permanent |
- Guild Crafting Boost: get it free from your guild hall when the guild has unlocked it.
- Item Booster: the 1-laurel version lasts 30 minutes; the rare Gem Store version lasts 2 hours. It adds 50% crafting critical chance.
- Experience Booster: the laurel version lasts 30 minutes. Use it for character experience earned while crafting. That is different from discipline experience.
- Productive Downtime: a permanent effect after you unlock the mastery. Consider it before leveling disciplines if convenient.
Item Booster, Guild Crafting Boost, and Productive Downtime can reduce the materials needed to level a discipline. Heroic Booster provides the Item and Experience Booster effects together; applying the same effect again extends its duration instead of adding another copy of its percentage.
More leveling tips
Prioritize Discovery
Discovering new recipes gives more crafting experience than repeating the same known recipe. Follow the guide's discoveries and production steps.
Use rare recipes
Rare items give an experience bonus: +225% through Production, or +325% when discovered.
You also earn character experience
Leveling a standard discipline to 400 gives roughly seven character levels' worth of experience; reaching 500 gives roughly ten.
Leveling another character through crafting
Tomes of Knowledge and Level-80 Boosts can speed up an alternate character, but a beginner may have few of them. Crafting can provide some character levels as well.
- Taking two disciplines to 500 provides roughly twenty character levels' worth of base experience. Your actual gain depends on starting level and character-experience bonuses.
- Crafting critical bonuses give extra discipline experience and can save ingredients. If you want more character levels, choose an effect that boosts character experience, such as Experience Booster.
Discipline levels and character levels use different experience systems. Check crafting bonuses to save ingredients, and character-experience bonuses to level the character.
For your first character, we recommend exploration, events, and story. On another character, level a discipline you need and enjoy the extra experience, then fill the gap through play or spare Tomes of Knowledge.